Have no fear.
They will manage to patch it together and limp along until a republican is president.
Public pensions and unions should be illegal
Since they get to vote for their opposition and the tax payers get to flip the bill
Same nonsense goin on in New Jersey
I say liquidate the pension fund and give back to the workers in a 401K
Public sector Union pension shortfall. Most public and private companies went over to 401K’s over 15 years ago or longer.
Now Taxes are so high they want to loot private retirement accounts so they can keep up with the Government Employees pensions.
And for the few that still remain, the Government regulates them twice as strict as their own pension systems.
With the current regime in charge it wouldn't suprise me one bit if people woke up one morning to to find their 401Ks and savings stripped Cyprus style for the "greater good". Not one bit.
Oh they’re already talking about it. I bet the legislation is already written and is just waiting on the right moment to introduce.
Let's say your local city council met, plopped down and approved a budget that outlined every expenditure for the next 20 years, increasing spending with each year based upon projected growth. Would you believe the next city council would be bound by that budget?
If the answer is no, then why would that same city council be bound to some budgeted retirements and benefits some council put in decades ago (or even last year?)
Let's state how deep the pit is, for example, in California. When the dot com bust happened in the stock market, CALPERs, the public employee pension fund, lost quite a bit of money (the state and many cities were deeply involved in investing retirement money in ‘California companies’, many of which were overinflated.) The way CALPERs works is that it is assumed that a certain percentage of return will come each year (in the case back then, the expected return was 8%.) Each city is obligated to make up whatever percentage of the expected return doesn't occur - so in that particular era, when CALPERs had a return of -28%, that meant that every city was obligated to pay half again what they had already contributed to the pension funds.
But this is brilliant... Knowing that cities didn't have funds to repay that shortfall (and mismanagement of public funds), CALPERs said that cities only had to pay back the expected interest on that lost money. Oh, heck, call it all lost money - just pay the interest, and everything will be just fine.
You literally have cities issuing bonds in California to pay the interest on CALPERs debt from 16 years ago. And even more fascinating, you have electorates approving those bonds.
So when your local city council says ‘we don't have money to pay to keep the library open’, what they really mean is ‘We're still paying off debts from nearly two decades ago which we had no say in, plus making new debts as again CALPERs fell short of the projected rate of return, and thus we're spending all your cash on paying for former employees.’
A nice start would be RICO charges against CALPERs and enablers for embezzlement of public funds. Either way, it is a pyramid scheme which they are leveraging against the value of your property. Guess how this is going to play out.
From what I can tell, that $3.4 trillion is just state and local. The Federal government will say their fund is solvent, but that is being funded out of debt.
>Given the vast array of people who have not saved for retirement your 401k nest egg is a tempting target.
Yep, the new motto for the ‘New America’: Shafting those that did for the benefit/votes of those that didn’t.
Sure I read that in the Constitution somewhere. I mean, it’s GOT to be there, right? It’s been the ‘norm’ for over 100yrs; even though We supposedly have a 4th, 5th, 13th A., right? /s